Ben Stiller: Facing His Past

Welcome to all there is. I've been listening to voice mails and videos we've received over the last few weeks. They're deeply moving, and I'll be putting together a special episode of the podcast soon, which is made up of them. You can record a video and email it to us if you want, the addresses, all there is at CNN.com. You can also message the videos to us on Instagram at all there is, and you can leave us voice mails at 404-827-1805. We'd love to hear from you. I want to play you a message I heard just this morning. My name is Grace. One thing I've learned in my increase now being almost five years since my mom died by suicide. I've learned, especially as we're approaching the holiday here, that the best place to be on a holiday for me is where there's no expectations of me and where I don't put expectations on myself, because I think I have to make a good impression or I can time bringing them down, and it took me a four and a half year. I didn't find it, but I did. She was my high school chemistry teacher, and I've been babysitting her kid, and I go to a birthday party, and I go to Thanksgiving and Christmas and things like that. I want to talk about my mom's favorite thing, and if I want to cancel up the last minute, I won't hurt anyone's feeling. I'm choosing you and your Grace on holidays. You may wrestle that there is because like I do, it was at least my blood family. That's for me. On holidays, I feel like those are the days where I let myself just pick me. One thing I'm going to ask though, and then told me yesterday that they read a book that's in the fifth year of Grace's hardest, and I responded by telling them every year. At least one person has told me that the year I'm in is the hardest, the first year is the hardest, the second year is the hardest, the third year is the hardest, and I ask them, what year is the easiest? When will I have the easiest year, and I really hope I haven't already had it, because living with my mom for five years is too many, and I just, one day, also passed her an age, and I also passed the time that I had with her, and I don't want to give out that, and I don't know what to do. Yeah, so if anyone wants to voice mail, it's telling you what year is the easiest. I'd love to know. It can be hard when you hear others put a timetable on grief or opine on how you should feel or what you should do. I'd never say it gets easy, but it can and does change. It can and does get easier. I think about what Nick Cave said in last week's podcast about the transformation he underwent after his fifteen-year-old son Arthur died. There was some years or a year at least of absolute devastating incapacitating sorrow at the time, you think, that it's simply unbearable, and you learn ultimately that actually it's not, you can bear it, and all sorts of extraordinary things happen within this thing that we call grief. That way of thinking is something that comes through time. It's not some sort of failure if you're not feeling that way. It takes a long time. It takes a long time, but beautiful things often do. You could say. We'll be right back with actor, director, writer, Ben Stiller, who spent the last few years going through the things his parents left behind. Welcome back. My guest today is actor, writer, and director Ben Stiller. His mom and Mira died in 2015 and his dad Jerry Stiller in 2020. They were famous comedy duo and Ben has spent the last several years going through and making a film about all the things they left behind. It's called Stiller and Mira. Nothing is lost and is playing now in Apple TV. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh yeah, it's great to really appreciate it. You and I have something in common, which is we both went through our parents stuff. Did you wait a while to start going through stuff? No. When my dad died. He died in 2020. In May of 2020, and like a week or two after that, I started going through stuff. I kind of got this weird sort of like panic. It was the apartment I grew up and it was the place we always went back to and it just it's home. It felt like home base. So then to think about it not being in our family and that was because they were leaving the apartment to my sister and I knew she wanted to sell it. It was kind of like this knee-jerk reaction of like I just I'm not going to remember this place fully. I want to just film it so I can document it. Yeah, that was the instinct. I really am like a very visual person so like just to have those visuals of the place, you know, to be able to look at it and study it and kind of like just remember it or if I was ever thinking of it. That was the main impetus. But then there was also then of course all this stuff of theirs. Did you know that your dad had made cassette recordings of conversations? Do you know you had this library? I didn't know we had all of these hundreds of hours of tapes that were a combination of cassette recordings. Everything from my dad having like a little mini cassette recorded record my kids, you know, as a grandparent to going back to these real to real tapes that he would record their improvisation sessions that they would do to write their sketches. I did this by myself going through these boxes and I found it. There's the reason I started this podcast because I found it to be such a kind of lonely and fraught process. It's so heavy. Of opening up these boxes. Even talking about it, it's like I start thinking about it. It's just, it's just there's so much stuff there that like every single piece, whether it's a photograph or like a cuff link or you know, these like little like chachkis and things that like just ended up in like the drawer by my mom's bedside table. Every single one of them would kind of take you down, could take you down like a whole avenue of memory or everything is infused with memory. Yeah. That sort of feeling like a piece of them or a connection, I'm like trying on some glasses and they're actually, they're my mother's father's glasses. And that suitcase that we have is my mom's father's suitcase that she had saved that I'd never looked at before. But the glasses I find very personal because that's something that someone wore every day. And their eyes looked through that into your voice. Yeah. Yeah. And then it may become these artifacts. They're like part of your parents. I don't know. There's something just very heavy about that too. My basement is still full of these boxes and I just have not. It's really just can't do it. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. It's kind of like a crazy sycephian type of thing because you're like always, I like go through stuff and then it's like, okay, I'm going to put this stuff over here and this stuff over here. But then it's also like then what? What am I going to do with that? And then like how do you dig into that stuff too? How do you start that process? Because when you start to listen to a tape, that's like an hour of my parents improvising and talking. I mean, there must be thousands of hours of record. I know there's hundreds that we found. And that really takes you down the rabbit hole. It's something fascinating to me about hearing just the sounds of the apartment and the phone ringing in the background or things like that that make it feel so real and in the moment. Well, also seeing those old super eight films that your dad shot, I mean, it's so New York circa 1972, '73. Yeah. I had the same jacket you wore. Like there was snow on the streets and snow days and just funky sneakers and snow days were excited. Hair, big hair and just messiness. You know, we watched Wonderama. Yeah. I went to Wonderama. I want every kid who would go to Wonderama would get like a glazed bagel with their name on it. necklace. Right. And they would always wear it to school and they'd be like, Oh, yeah. No, yeah, I was at Wonderama. Yeah. And I never got to go to Wonderama. I was like, but it's interesting because part of the thing for me and going through these boxes, which is really difficult and I'll take it a box and I'll think, Okay, I'm going to make progress today. I'm going to do a box and it's a box of Christmas cards from 1974. Like how meaningful can this be? And I'm going through it and then some of it are people who I knew and I remember Walter Mathem, his wife Carol was my mom's best friend. We went to Chaplin and Charlie Chaplin's Christmas cards and see that's incredible. But like what do you do with that stuff? Because everything feels like a piece of my mom or my dad or my past. Right. And yet it's not. Right. Yeah. It's hard. Like you start to organize stuff and then you're like, Well, why what is this? Then what do I do with this? Ultimately, I think it's, I hear my dad's voice in my head when I'm doing it because he was very much about saving stuff. It's funny though, because it gets exhausting too in the moment when you're doing it, I think, after a little while. It just gets tiring too because you have to stop it. Yeah. And then you're like, Well, and then you start to get like a little bit like, I guess like, do I keep the Charlie Chaplin Christmas card or not? I don't know. No, let's put it in. In other words, you go like get a little wiped out in the moment and you kind of forget even like how in like how much this is like you just keep all the stuff. It's great to have it. And then you do find I think the little things that mean something to you. I've come to the realization I'm trying to make sense of what happened. Like, what was this entire experience of growing up in the family that I grew up in? That's so in my mind, like saturated with colors and the smell of rego candles and cigarettes and clinking glasses and people drinking and so funny. That's so many similar. And like parties at the house. I like the house. Famous people who you see on television suddenly in your house, My parents gave. When Charlie Chaplin came back to America after being in exile to receive a special Academy Award, he and Una flew to New York first, and my parents gave him a big welcome party. And there's a photo in the New York Times, a me shaking Charlie Chaplin's hand in 19, I was six or seven years old. Wow. Did you, did you, did you know? Yeah, they, they gave me a whole like course of study of we watched Charlie Chaplin films. But of course he looked nothing like the Trump. So I was like, who's this old guy? But for you, was it a sad thing to do this? I think ultimately, even if you feel a little closer or you learn something, you are left feeling the sadness of I still miss them. And all of this searching and all of this connecting or making a movie or writing about or anything. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you're still dealing with just the reality of what it is to be a human being and not have people around who you loved. For me, making the movie the first two and a half years of working on it were not like very happy. There were so many times when I didn't want to really deal with going into that stuff. Because when you do go into it, it brings up the different feelings. I think both of our childhoods, we were around adults a lot who were partying and living their lives in that way that parents in the 70s did, which was for us as kids, it's like we had to figure it out on our own. Yeah, my mom took me to Studio 54 when I was 11. So you know, I went to Studio 54 when I was 13. No, this is so weird. It was like letting children into Studio 54, basically. I'm obsessed with the patterns of history that run through families and how we find ourselves repeating the patterns of those who come before us. You grew up with these parents who were working constantly, who needed to work to support the family. They were on the road a lot. Yeah. And then you had kids and you ended up repeating the pattern of your parents with your kids. I did. Yeah. And I think about how that happened because I'm always being aware of thinking, oh, I don't want to make mistakes in my parents made or things they did as parents that weren't, you know, the best. But I think for me, what happened is like my relationship with my work, it became very important to me and probably like out of balance with really attending to all the relationships in my life. I will understand the perspective you have about your work is the same I have and it is very difficult for anybody around me. I get laser-focused and I'm a perfectionist. Like it's so obvious the way it has to be and nothing else is acceptable. Right. And no one else understands this. I'm just trying to make it perfect. Yeah, these are the people in your life who love you. Yes, these are the people in your life. And then once the work goes away and when you're old and on your deathbed, these are the people you hope are around. Yeah, and they're not going to be around. I want to be present in the lives of my kids. And yet, I watch this and I realize it's not enough to think that and to realize that it's, you actually have to work on it every single day and take action on it. Which I think is an advantage when you do have kids when you're not, you know, like super young because I'm 50. Okay, fine. I know. I started like, no, you got it together. No, but like I, you know, I wasn't super young. I felt like I was like 35 or three, right? That's not really young to have kids. But even then, I think if like if I had them now, it would be a whole different thing because I think I do have a little more self-awareness in that area. Or maybe it's because I learned it through trial and error. But there was a blind spot for me as much as I had these ideas about my parents and what they got right, what they didn't get right. It didn't jive with my ambitions or my creative drive. I didn't understand that I was actually doing the same thing, you know? That's the thing that I'm kind of like, wow, that's really like I really missed that. There's a conversation you have in the film with your son. Let's play that. Okay. You know, after a tough day, you know, or something was going wrong, you can get very much in your own head, you know, and I think once you kind of go into that place, it's hard to get you out of it. So that would kind of put a damper on the, you know, fun part about being on vacation. You know, I mean, you have all these hats that you're trying to balance, you know, being a director and actor, you know, a producer or writer, but also just like a father, right? And sometimes I felt that that would come, you know, last to these other things. The irony is I thought I was doing so much better than my parents. I thought I was pulling it off. I was flying home on the weekends and having special places for the kids to play when they come visit the set, but in reality and just hearing them talk about it, for them, it was the same thing I was going through as a kid, and I just couldn't see that at all at the time. I find that devastating. Yeah, it's not, you might listen to it. I'm like, I was not expecting to say last. You know, I thought he's going to say like maybe like not at the top when he said last. I was like, but like, look, it's valid because that's his experience. We all learn as you have kids and they get older that kids take in everything we took in as kids they're taking in. That scene made me think my five-year-old, what is he going to say in 20 years? Right. I'm actively thinking, okay, what do I need to do now? I mean, I've already made, I feel like I've made the fact that you're asking those questions, honestly, is that's all you can do. You know what I mean? Well, you can do more than that. You can actually, right. Of course, you can actually do. But you can be aware of it is the key. And all you can do is do the best you can. But that perfectionism is something your dad had as well. 100%. Yeah, almost all the time I feel like he was in his head, which again, I really identify with. There's a conversation that he recorded between your mom and him. It's essentially an argument where your mom is saying, and we'll play in a second, that he's just joyless, that he's so perfectionist that he sucks the joy out of everything. For this, I'm aware of this. And then, at the end, when things go halfway decently, the real release is amazing. It's like, you're just, oh God, God, it's so great, it's so, you know, God, you go over. How did you start? I was just good, God. I do want to be torn up as a good guy, yeah. I know, it doesn't bother my mind, and, you know, and, you know, we look departments very lovingly by people. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Look at what you say. What? But for either of us, we just plan it. There has to be some way you can get an authentic sense of yourself without worrying how you'll be seen. It is joyless. Absolutely joyless. And I have been accused of this as well. And I agree. Me too. And I also, I agree too. Like, that's that what hit me when I heard her say that was also like, yeah, that is, I've had that feeling sometimes when I stress out about something so much. I feel like doing something on the Oscars or something where it's like a pressure moment to be funny or deliver, which is I don't love doing those kinds of things because of that. Because what happens is I stress out so much about it that, you know, and then if it goes well, it's literally what she says. I'm just relieved. But it's not like I'm happy. It's always great. It's like, no, I'm relieved. I think my mom was also responding to like her relationship with my dad in terms of how he was with people because he was incredibly outgoing and generous and genuine in his interest in other people and connecting with people and wanting people, as he says, to like him, which I, again, like a very human thing that I really identify with too. But my dad, he didn't have any issues to say, yeah, I want everybody to love me because I didn't really get loved when I was a kid, you know. We'll have more of Ben Stiller in a moment. If you want to listen or watch past episodes of this podcast, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts or at our grief community page at cnn.com/all there is. You can also watch our new weekly companion show there. All there is live Thursday nights at 9.15 p.m. Eastern. We'll be right back with more from Ben Stiller. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life Podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die, how we think about death in the first place, greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. BJ Miller. He's a hospice and palliative care physician. We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging and therefore getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interest, services and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now, Revenue Get Your Podcast. Do you feel like you grieved your parents? I still feel like I'm going through that. I have these moments of, I think making the movie for me was a way to address connecting with my grief because I have such a barrier towards really opening up to that, I think. And maybe similar to you in that way where if you made a documentary about your mom, you process making this podcast, you can take what you do and use it as a way to help yourself work through stuff. And I actually think that that's a lot of what art is and creativity is. It shouldn't be indulgent self therapy or whatever that nobody wants to see. And by the way, that was a concern I had too in making the movie. But I do think that being able to do this and have a way to delve into it through quote unquote work or creative process was a way in for me to start to connect with them. And now what I think it's opened up is I have these moments by myself where I try to connect with my parents a little bit. Do you feel them? I have. Do you feel anything? No, that's the issue. No, but I'm joking, but look, I'm saying I'm saying this to somebody. Sometimes I do, but I know when I see it, but to go through life, not feeling it. Well, if you're like me, it's like somebody's going through life, you have to kind of like put up the deflector shields, right? Yes. No, but the problem is you get used to having them up and then when you let them down. But yes, I've had these weird moments, little spiritual kind of connection moments that I, like, they sound so silly, but like of a moment when you meet somebody or something and you feel like you're somehow connecting with your parent, have you ever had that? Yeah. I was at West Point scouting for a movie, you know, West Point up the Hudson. And I knew my mom had gone to boarding school up there at a place called Lady Cliff Academy that was in Highland Falls, New York. And I had never been able to find it. And I was in the West Point Visitor Center and I asked somebody, I said, "Hey, there's a place called Lady Cliff Academy," and he said, "You're standing in it." This was Lady Cliff Academy, West Point, bought it a few years ago. It's part of their, wow, the thing. And then this woman recognized me there and she came up to me and she was so happy to see me. She gave me this big hug, was just so excited. And I was in that place in that moment and I felt like I was somehow connecting with my mother in that moment. And there are those types of things that happen every once in a while. But then for me, I can just, like, sort of sit with these images. I have like a screen saver on my computer, me and my mom when I was like nine years old. And those are these kind of touchstones where I can, I feel okay, kind of just like going there and opening up and letting down the shields and just trying to be with them, you know. I stopped doing this podcast after the first season, it was just kind of overwhelming. And I solicited voice mails from listeners and we got calls from people about their grief. And I listened to the course of about four months. And I still wasn't going to do any more podcasts, but it made me go back down to the basement and start going through these boxes again, which I stopped. And the first box I opened up was a box of my dad's papers, he was a writer. I'd randomly picked this box and I opened up a file, first file. And it was an essay called The Importance of Grieving that he had written. And it was about the importance of children grieving, what happens to kids who don't grieve and how they go through their life with a certain melancholy, they can never quite put their finger on. And I realized that's exactly what I had done. I had shut down as a kid. And my entire life was keeping the grief buried and it made me realize I need to actually grieve. I need to actually feel allowed myself to feel and that's what I've been doing the last like two years. And it's been life-changing, it's been extraordinary, but very difficult. That feels like it literally, like him kind of reaching. Yeah, I mean, it's again, it's one of those moments like- But that's like, I mean, that's almost undeniable, that's- Yeah. Yeah. How do you do that in terms of letting yourself feel? Well, doing this podcast, talking to people, just learning from other people, how to grieve. I mean, I literally am trying to learn how to grieve. Love to- It's been incredible. I mean, Stephen Colbert- Can you tell me what you learned? Stephen Colbert introduced me to the idea of grief as a gift and learning to love the thing you most wish had never happened. There's a guy, Francis Weller, who's talked about, you can develop a companionship with grief. And this notion that others have taught me that you can still have a relationship with somebody who's died. My relationship with my dad has changed. I know my dad better now than I ever did before. I've read his letters. And you know your dad better now than you did when he was alive because you've read everything there is. I definitely agree with that. I feel like the people who are really close to you and that have made an impact and are a part of you, those relationships go on and continue. I know- because I- how much I think about them or the conversations I have in my head with them. Overall, I think the relationship with my parents has become much more connected and interested. And now, besides being this age and being able to look at them through the eyes of- having gone through a lot of experiences and having a lot more empathy for them, I just kind of also can really appreciate them. And maybe like five times a week, people will come up to me about my parents saying like this happened to me. Your dad did this for me. Your mom said this to me. Your mom told me to fuck off this time or whatever because she had a- you know, she always have a- like a story about my mom saying, "Somebody, I'll get the fuck out of here." Because she loved to, you know, sort of test people that way. I feel- she feels so alive. She's such a- interesting smart. I have such an appreciation for her and my dad. I do feel like it's open up a conversation with people. Like the way you're talking to people, but I think it's also the understanding a little bit more of what it is to be a person and that I just feel- I feel better. I feel a little better about all of it, you know, like because it's out in the open. Well, even talking about, you know, your mom's drinking. Exactly. Once I saw that it actually was like kind of opening up these conversations with people about their own experiences, which you were saying. Which by the way are conversations that are sorely needed and people are desperate to have, but it's just not something we really allow in society. It's just not something we hold space for. No, and it's- and it's- you know, especially in television too. That's why the other part I was really fascinated with making the movie was the archival 70s interviews, Gene Schallett, all those Mike Douglas, all those people- like the- David Suskind. David Suskind. It's conversations that people would have on TV in that era were much more real. And that is the stuff that nobody talks about. Like, you can't talk about death really on a TV talk. I love Jimmy Fallon, but like, I'm not going to talk about death on the tonight show. You go out and you want to have fun and be funny, but like the minute something comes up in your head, you go like, "Oh, that's something about a disease or death." It's like, "Oh, I can't talk about that." Well, it's funny. I do a New Year's Eve with Andy Cohen, and he's always like, "Okay, and he's very much programming the whole thing." And so he'll be like, "Okay, we'll do your grief two minutes." You get two minutes on grief. Do your grief then. What's Andy's relationship with grief? Oh, that's what I mean. He's the happiest person I've ever met. I mean, he's thankfully both his parents are there and they're amazing. But it's interesting because on New Year's Eve, I will talk about grief because as a child, I was watching the Dick Clark Ball Drop. My dad was in a hospital in 1978. I was 10 years old and he died five days later. I remember watching the ball drop and just knowing something terrible was going to happen in this New Year. Me mentioning it in the minute or two that Andy allows me to in New Year's Eve, I cannot tell you the people who have reached out to me saying, "You know what? I was watching the ball drop and really sad and it's such a difficult night and it meant so much that you said this thing about, "You know, I see you out there if you're missing somebody," and I'm sure you will find that as more people see the film, just people coming up to you and talking about your parents to you and it opens up a conversation which is actually the most meaningful conversations I have and I get to have them all day long because people literally stop me everywhere I go to talk about people they've lost. It's beautiful. It's so valuable. Do you have any regrets because there's a recording that your dad made of he and your mom talking and your mom just gotten off the phone with you and she's sad and she's like, "Oh, he was clipped," and your dad was like, "What? He didn't want to talk to you," which made me feel bad about not spending more time with my mom. Yeah. That was actually one of the most uncomfortable things for me to hear when I found that because that was being like, "You're in the bathroom in high school and here if someone's talking about you." But yet they're talking about their son and it's your parents. I know, and they're talking about like, "The son doesn't really want to hang out with him." But the thing is. Because I don't feel sad for that, I feel bad that I was not able to really appreciate. I feel bad that I was so not self-aware or so wrapped up in my own stuff at the time. Now, with a 20-year-old and a almost 24-year-old, I'm lucky when I get a call from them during the week that they actually even want to talk or hang out because they're doing their own thing. It is a natural thing that happens, but I really kind of go more to like, "Oh, God, I was so wrapped up in the work at that point." It was probably like what my son said. I would get in my head and disappear a little bit. You had advanced prostate cancer that you found out about at the surgery for. Did that make you think about your mortality? Oh, my God, yeah. When you get a diagnosis like that, everything stops, you know? All your plans, all your thoughts, my job, all of it's like, wait a minute, this is something that could change everything. It was scary, definitely scary. Nothing like the feeling of relief when you get the call from the doctor, "Hey, the blood test came back, PSA zero, your cancer free," and you want to hold on to that feeling for me. It's 11 years now, that feeling of gratitude. And I still do have that, but of course it goes up and down, you get wrapped up in things. But I find even more kind of disturbing, though, it's like I hear about people my age. I was, Bill Burr has a funny routine about people just dropping dead, like his age, like guys with like 50s, 60s are just drop dead. That's very disconcerting, because again, it's like we have all these plans and ideas and things we're doing, but it all could just be like, "No, yeah, it's over." And honestly, if it was over tomorrow, it wouldn't be like, "Oh yeah, he died kind of young, but you know, you know, you know, you get a life." Right? Ben Stiller, thank you so much. Thanks, man. Ben Stiller's film about his parents, Stiller and Mira, "Nothing is lost is out now. You can watch it on Apple TV." Next week, my conversation with actor Kelsey Grammer, who was 18-year-old sister Karen, was murdered when Kelsey was 20. We talk about her loss and others, she's experienced and the role the grief has played in his life. There was always a note of tragedy in my life. Karen's murder was so horrible and so overwhelming that I couldn't do anything, but keep it with me. It stayed beside me for a long time. And even though I would still have moments when I would live very well and happily and it would always come sneaking back in, and I think that's okay. Next next week on All There Is. We are talking about Will Bill Marbe invited back to the White House? She says, "No, Obama and Trump hit the campaign trail. Trump's latest giveaway, the latest in the midterm lawsuits, and Israeli elections will it be buy-by-be? Have I got news for your ears? Check us out on Apple, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcasts even better. You can watch The Podcast on Spotify."